Chapter 1623 - Failure And Success (Part 1) (1/2)
By reversing the energy flow of the Forgemastering process, the Yggdrasill wood was both compromising the power core's integrity and wrestling its control out of Lith's hands.
It was only a matter of seconds before the energy mass exploded and turned the staff into wood flakes.
Luckily, Lith had followed Salaark's advice and purified the two Adamant blocks that the Royals had gifted to him and Tista during the last Gala. This way, Lith and Solus had one Forge each and could combine Menadion's prized technique with their own, Twin Forge.
The technique exploited their perfect mind link and the fact that they had the same energy signature, allowing them to switch their roles at will or to combine their strength when necessary.
After hitting the Forges with the hammers, their mana flowed inside the Adamant, where the magic metal stored and amplified it thanks to its own ability to draw in the world energy akin to a breathing technique, and converted it into their mana.
A second hit and the hammer retrieved the amplified mana. Lith and Solus only needed a speck of focus to restore their energy signature before striking at the Forge again.
With each cycle, the power that they had originally infused in their respective hammer grew at the expense of the mana geyser that endlessly fueled the tower without any further effort on their side.
They used the extra energy to compensate for the mana loss from both fixing the damages in the power core and countering the pull that the Yggdrasill branch exerted on it.
Were the power core to enter the mystical wood before the end of the amplification process, the energy from the crystals and the Evil Eyes would have blinded their mystical senses.
At that point, it would be impossible for them to repair the power core without using Invigoration. Yet the use of a breathing technique required physical contact and they couldn't step inside the Forgemastering circle without making it collapse.
The tug of war between the artifact and the Forgemasters went on for several excruciating minutes. The power core's deterioration rate was faster than the Adamant's ability to enhance their mana, keeping Lith and Solus from taking a break.
Only by combining their strength non-stop could they keep pulling at the power core while also fixing the damages that the eyes and the crystals inflicted upon it and not letting the world energy dissipate at the same time.
The fight was desperate yet they refused to yield.
Solus even cut off most of the power from the other floors of the tower in order to give Lith as much juice as she could, yet it wasn't enough. Without Abyssal Gaze their energies dwindled, consuming more mana than that the tower could passively restore.
Lith squeezed every drop of energy he had, focusing solely on the task at hand. His core grew weaker but his determination endured. When the power core reached 200% of the mana capacity that Lith had outside the tower, it was still a perfect sphere.
Half of it had already been pulled inside the staff but Solus played around it by making the power core spin and by treating the exposed half. They had to work even faster while keeping their accuracy, depleting their mana reserves even faster.
Solus cursed her long hair when exhaustion made them stop floating and fall on her face. It blocked her view for just a split second, but it was almost fatal nonetheless. She swept it away along with the sweat that covered her forehead, revealing her brown eyes.
Lith struck at the Adamant Forge more and more often to compensate for his lack of energy, until the hammer came back empty.
”Fuck me sideways.” He said when his hand refused to lift again.
There was only so much that willpower could do without mana and his deep violet core was dry. Solus had given up on her energy body as soon as her Forge had become useless, hoping to gain one more second.